Bao Gu could already infer some of what had happened from the scene before her.
“Mm. We’ll talk when we get back.”
The moment she finished speaking, she sensed something strange beside her. Turning her head, she saw a cultivator suddenly appear at her side.
The cultivator’s arrival immediately drew a chorus of startled cries from those around them. Judging from their reactions, he was clearly some extraordinary figure. At the same time, she saw Yu Mi, Bao Nianhui, Si Ruo, and Qu Yirou all change expression.
The newcomer stopped roughly thirty feet from Bao Gu. He stood with his hands behind his back, looking at her with an indifferent expression.
Bao Nianhui’s brow furrowed slightly. He sent her a voice transmission.
“Master, that man is an Earth Immortal from the Heavenly Dao Sect, known as the Supreme Immortal Lord. Over the past century, the Heavenly Dao Sect has expanded rapidly because of him, and it often clashes with the Chop Gang over their interests.”
After seeing him, Yu Mi slowly stepped forward two paces.
“May I ask what brings the Supreme Immortal Lord here?”
The Supreme Immortal Lord ignored Yu Mi. His gaze settled on Bao Gu.
“I’ve heard that the Gang Lord can fight an Earth Immortal, so I’ve come to seek your instruction.”
Bao Gu stared at the cultivator known as the Supreme Immortal Lord in astonishment and could not help sizing him up.
Unlike the Earth Immortals she had encountered in the Savage Wilderness Realm, he radiated a dense, weapon-like aura. Although he had a human form, she could clearly see a fairly high-grade treasured sword embedded within his body. Nor did he possess the immortal aura characteristic of a true Earth Immortal.
How should she put it? To Bao Gu, the Earth Immortal before her did not feel like a true Earth Immortal at all.
He felt like a weapon!
She had seen through his strength at a glance.
“No need.”
“What? Does the Gang Lord think this old man is unworthy of fighting you?”
He stood with his hands behind his back, perfectly composed. Not a trace of emotion could be seen on his face, yet he projected the full bearing of a grandmaster who looked down upon all the heroes beneath heaven.
By comparison, Bao Gu had completely restrained her aura. Both her presence and her posture seemed weak, and she even looked less imposing and steady than Bao Nianhui beside her.
An Earth Immortal stood at the absolute summit of the lower realm. Such a person had every reason to look down upon the world.
The Chop Gang had no Earth Immortal. Whether one looked at the Chop Gang or Xuantian Sect, Yu Mi was the strongest. Yet Yu Mi was only at the Great Perfection of the Mahayana stage, and she still had to survive a heavenly tribulation before she could become an Earth Immortal.
The difference of a single heavenly tribulation seemed to be only one step, but in truth, it was as vast as heaven and earth.
As for Bao Gu, she had been injured by a heavenly tribulation and buried in the Immortal Tomb for more than eight hundred years. Now that the tomb had been blasted open and she had emerged ahead of time, it was still unknown whether she had recovered. There was a very high chance that her strength had been greatly reduced.
The fact that she had killed a late-stage Tribulation Transcendence expert with a single sword while at the early stage did not mean she possessed the strength to fight an Earth Immortal.
Si Ruo asked,
“What? Does the Supreme Immortal Lord intend to defeat Bao Gu and take her place?”
“Just a little exchange of pointers.”
Si Ruo gave a light laugh.
“Just a little exchange of pointers? If Bao Gu loses today, the Chop Gang will be attacked tomorrow, won’t it? Is the Heavenly Dao Sect really this impatient?”
“This old man is merely sparring with the Chop Gang’s Gang Lord. How would that affect Yue Kingdom?”
“The Heavenly Dao Sect is aiming to become the greatest power in the cultivation world, and it has its eyes fixed on the Ascension Platform. Do you really think this has nothing to do with Yue Kingdom?”
“So Yue Kingdom intends to stick its neck out for the Chop Gang?”
Si Ruo gave another soft laugh.
“What do you think?”
Bao Gu had never imagined that someone would come challenging her the moment she emerged from the tomb. She stared at the Supreme Immortal Lord in utter astonishment.
Did they think that because she had spent several hundred years lying in a tomb, they could bully her at will? Or did they really think that a pseudo-Earth Immortal who had attained the Dao through weapon disintegration was something impressive?
The Supreme Immortal Lord looked at Bao Gu.
“What? You don’t dare accept the challenge?”
Bao Gu did not quite know how to respond.
The Supreme Immortal Lord narrowed his eyes. His gaze toward Bao Gu grew colder, and his aura became increasingly aggressive as a powerful pressure spread outward from him.
Even Si Ruo, whose cultivation was only at the Great Perfection of the Tribulation Transcendence stage, could not withstand the pressure. She had no choice but to summon the True Dragon Sword to stabilize and protect herself.
Qu Yirou also mobilized all her energy to endure the pressure bearing down on her.
Yu Mi’s brows drew together. Gritting her teeth, she circulated all her strength to resist the pressure released by the Supreme Immortal Lord. On one hand, she had to oppose his power. On the other, she had to desperately restrain her own aura so that the Heavenly Dao would not sense her and bring down an Ascension Tribulation.
For a moment, she was under tremendous strain.
Bao Nianhui, the weakest among them, was forced back more than a hundred feet. Without saying a word, he retreated to the flagship and prepared to support Bao Gu at any moment.
Bao Gu frowned, and her gaze toward the Supreme Immortal Lord turned cold.
“Are you relying on your higher cultivation to bully the Chop Gang and me?”
The Supreme Immortal Lord chuckled.
“That is too strong a way to put it. This old man merely has itchy hands and wants to exchange a few blows with you.”
An idea stirred in Bao Gu’s mind. After a moment of thought, she asked,
“What if I refuse to fight?”
Even Si Ruo and Qu Yirou were taken aback.
Yu Mi’s body trembled slightly, and she looked at Bao Gu worriedly.
The expressions of the surrounding cultivators also became strange.
The Chop Gang’s lord was actually refusing to fight? Could it be that being blasted out of the tomb ahead of time meant her injuries had not healed and her strength had been greatly reduced?
The Supreme Immortal Lord nodded.
“It makes no difference if the Gang Lord refuses. Though this old man is disappointed, I have no wish to make things difficult for you. However, there is a business proposition I would like to discuss.”
“Go on.”
“The Heavenly Dao Sect has accumulated a respectable fortune by now. We are willing to contribute to the construction of the Ascension Platform.”
“I don’t want it.”
The Supreme Immortal Lord’s eyes turned cold.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“The literal meaning.”
“That is fine. Then let us discuss a third matter—the deaths of my Heavenly Dao Sect disciples.”
“Go ahead.”
Bao Gu could see that he intended to hound her to the end. She wanted to see what else he could say.
“Just now, members of my Heavenly Dao Sect died by your hand. That debt must be settled with you.”
Bao Gu raised a brow in surprise.
“When did I ever kill anyone from your sect?”
Yu Mi said,
“The people from the Heavenly Dao Sect tried to forcibly break open your tomb. The sword formation you suddenly released annihilated them on the spot.”
Bao Gu cried out in astonishment.
“When I was in the tomb, it was people from the Heavenly Dao Sect attacking me?”
Si Ruo said,
“If no one from the Heavenly Dao Sect had taken action, not a single cultivator in the entire cultivation world would believe it.”
Seeing that Bao Gu remained perfectly calm, Si Ruo felt that perhaps she really did still possess the strength to fight an Earth Immortal.
Bao Gu laughed in anger.
“Your people dug up my tomb, got themselves killed, and now you’re here demanding that I settle the score?”
“If the Heavenly Dao Sect wants to go to war with the Chop Gang, just say so plainly. I’ll take you on. Why dress it up as a spar? When you call it a spar, I feel genuinely embarrassed about bullying you. If you had simply declared war, you wouldn’t have needed to waste all this breath on so much nonsense. I could have slapped you to death in two blows, then gone home sooner to catch up with everyone and ask what has happened over the past few years.”
She paused, then added without the slightest mercy,
“You went to all the trouble of using an Earth Immortal treasure to undergo weapon disintegration and become a pseudo-Earth Immortal. Why are you so determined to throw your life away? Becoming an immortal through weapon disintegration may not make you a true Earth Immortal, and cultivation afterward may be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you can never advance beyond this point. Why seek death?”
Si Ruo was delighted. She had never realized that Bao Gu could be so viciously sharp-tongued.
The Supreme Immortal Lord’s expression darkened.
“What brazen arrogance!”
The instant the words left his mouth, he suddenly raised a palm and struck toward Bao Gu.
His seemingly casual palm strike carried a surging force that seemed capable of toppling mountains and overturning seas, rolling toward her with an aura of endless destruction.
The distance was too small, and Yu Mi, Si Ruo, and Qu Yirou were still beside Bao Gu. Fearing that the three of them would be injured, Bao Gu released a surge of energy that wrapped around them and carried them away to a distant place.
Then she gathered the spiritual power of heaven and earth. Just as she had done countless times over the years while creating heaven, earth, and all things, she molded it into a miniature world and hurled it straight at the Supreme Immortal Lord.
The Supreme Immortal Lord had barely unleashed his palm when he realized that Bao Gu and the others had vanished. A moment later, he sensed a vast world suddenly appear overhead and sweep down toward him.
Its momentum was ferocious. He let out an explosive roar, clenched both fists, and punched straight upward.
As his blow landed, a massive sword phantom burst from his body and shot upward with enough force to pierce the heavens, charging toward the descending miniature world—a world that felt boundless to divine sense, though it appeared only a few hundred feet across to the naked eye.
The sword phantom plunged into the descending world and exploded, unleashing a monstrous force that tore the miniature world apart and blasted it into pieces.
Yet the energy within the shattered world did not vanish. Instead, it suddenly condensed into an enormous palm radiating Five-Element sword energy.
Seeing the palm descend, the Supreme Immortal Lord once again punched out a sword phantom toward it. However, the instant his fist was launched, the palm suddenly transformed into tens of thousands of razor-sharp immortal weapons, each radiating Five-Element energy, and surged toward him from every direction with unstoppable force.
The densely packed swords formed a sword formation that sealed off the entire region. They surged in from all sides, sealing even the void and leaving him nowhere to retreat.
Sensing the imminent danger, he let out a roar like thunder and transformed into a colossal golden sword blazing with sky-filling golden radiance. Around the golden sword, layer upon layer of sword phantoms, like dragon-shaped whirlwinds, firmly shielded its body.
The sight chilled the hearts of everyone watching from afar.
That was the might of an Earth Immortal. Who could possibly withstand it?
At the very instant that thought arose, the sword formation formed by tens of thousands of Five-Element swords came shrieking in wave after wave, densely piercing the golden radiance.
The erupting force made everyone’s eyes ache. Even the divine senses probing the battlefield were shredded apart. Countless cultivators clutched their heads and cried out in pain, while the overwhelming sense of danger drove many of those watching to retreat at nearly instinctive speed.
Everything happened incredibly quickly. It all took place within just a few breaths.
It ended even faster—so fast that it was over almost as soon as it began.
In an instant, heaven and earth fell silent.
Only after the pain faded and they realized that everything around them had gone quiet did the observing cultivators open their eyes and extend their divine senses.
The place where the battle had taken place was empty. The Supreme Immortal Lord was nowhere to be seen.
Many people stared at one another in confusion.
The experts with sufficient cultivation and eyesight, however, were stunned beyond words.
They had clearly seen the Supreme Immortal Lord being annihilated in an instant by the tens of thousands of swords that made up the formation.
With so many swords stabbing a single sword, the result was no less thorough than crushing it. They had shattered the sword, then stabbed the pieces into fragments, then reduced those fragments to powder. A gust of wind had carried everything away.
An Earth Immortal had died in the blink of an eye, without even a speck of dust left behind.
Bao Gu stood to one side, her cheeks faintly flushed. The sheer overkill left her feeling extremely awkward and embarrassed.
Qu Yirou, Yu Mi, and Si Ruo all stared at her with their eyes wide and their mouths agape. From where they had stood beside Bao Gu, they had seen her make only one move: raising her arm and slapping downward.
Si Ruo pinched her thigh hard enough to make herself hiss.
“How is this possible? Bao Gu, that was simply…”
Bao Gu gave a wry smile.
“Simply too much bullying, right? He was the one who picked a fight with me first.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. How can your battle prowess be this strong…”
“I fused with a supreme-grade King Weapon from the Upper Realm—”
Before she could finish, she suddenly sensed winds and clouds roiling across the sky. The aura of a lightning tribulation spread through the air, so powerful that it made hearts tremble.
Si Ruo and Qu Yirou shot away from Bao Gu almost immediately.
On the Daluo Scarlet-Gold Warship, Bao Nianhui was startled when the lightning tribulation gathered and instantly enveloped the vessel. He immediately ordered everyone aboard to activate the flagship and get away at top speed.
Yu Mi looked up at the lightning tribulation gathering overhead and realized that it had not locked onto her. She gave Bao Gu a long, complicated look, then took off after Qu Yirou and the others, putting as much distance between herself and Bao Gu as possible.
The surrounding cultivators scattered like startled birds.
Bao Gu looked up at the thunderclouds gathering above her with horror, then cast an envious glance at the cultivators fleeing in all directions.
She wanted to run too.
She had only just been struck by heavenly lightning before entering the tomb, and now, barely out, she was about to be struck by lightning again.
What kind of tribulation was she even undergoing?
